November 28, 2003

Fun With Numbers

Today we're going to do a little something called Fun With Numbers. Get out your pencils and scratch paper and be prepared to answer the following questions.

1a. Frida is allergic to cigarette smoke. There is a person sitting 1.5 meters from her smoking Camels at a rate of 1 every 2.59 minutes. If this person has known for approximately 10.5 years that she is allergic to smoke, how long should Frida wait before cleaning this person's clock?
a] 20 seconds
b] 10 seconds
c] 1 metric hour
d] Ulysses S. Grant

1b. Given the preceding information, calculate where the Camel smoker's lighter will end up.
a] Up his ass
b] Up his nose
c] In his drink
d] The eucalyptus tree

2a. Ted is an Evangelical Lutheran. Ted spends 1.333 hours per day in pagan chatrooms preaching at people and telling them they will go to hell unless they embrace Jesus, when they were really just minding their own goddamn business. On an average day, Ted converts 0 people to Christianity, gives 9 people headaches and gets the Ignore feature used on him 17 times. Given an average chatroom size of 21 pagans, how long will it take for Ted to piss off the entire pagan community?

2b. Given the preceding information, how long will it take before some pagan with a rather looser sense of ethics than I have hexes Ted?
a] 45 minutes
b] It's already been done
c] 15.3 seconds
d] Gerald R. Ford

3. Brian is 17.1 years old, and his car is 9.67 years old. He plays Limp Bizkit in his car stereo at a volume of 2.56 x 1019 decibels. How long will it be before somebody in town shoves a banana up Brian's tailpipe [and possibly the tailpipe of his car]?
a] 1 week
b] 2 weeks
c] never, everybody that's old enough to care is already deaf
d] never, cos Brian's the police chief's kid [grrrrrrrrrrrr]
e] The volume of a cube

4. Jimmy is a loudmouthed shithead who thinks he knows everything. If Jimmy is put into a room with 20 other people in it, and he dispenses useless, ill-informed and uncalled-for advice at the rate of 4.0028 mouth-offs per standard minute, what will the room look like in an hour?
a] It will be empty except for Jimmy and one drunk who has passed out next to him.
b] Jimmy will have been stuffed into a closet and everyone else will be having a good time.
c] It will look like Baghdad.
d] It will look like the Battle of Agincourt.
e] The common fruit fly

Scoring: If you answered 1a: d], 1b: d], 2a: e], 2b: d], 3: e] and 4: e], you are qualified to run for president in '04. If you answered anything else to these questions, you've probably guessed about as closely as I could.

ahh, Benadryl...

Nothing like bizarre antihistamine-induced dreams to spice up your evening...tonight's selection included something about Barbies connected to something about some slut, who might have been me and might have been somebody else. And there was this stuff I was supposed to do with these books for work. Peckerhead [the plant manager] was there; at least he didn't give me a hug this time, so it doesn't technically count as a nightmare. I also dreamed this one dude from the art department where I went [who now has a master's, I think...grrr, that oughta be me too] was painting in my studio, and I had this huge-ass oil canvas, and I'd cut the mat for this little painting all wrong--it was crooked and overcut and not the right size at all--but when I put the painting in a certain spot on the larger canvas, it fit with the image [which was abstract and barely started] on that canvas. Dunno...something about putting things in context?? Anyway, at least I get into the studio in my dreams; maybe I'll start going in while I'm awake.and now i speak to you are you in there
As you can see, the buttons are still not rendering, although the links are still live as far as I know. I haven't done anything yet; I'm too scrambled mentally and will continue to be so as I head into the last week before my Depo. Will try to read more on HTML and figure out what the deal is. It's been suggested that I change the filenames so that they don't contain spaces. I'm gonna try that, among other things. If anyone has any suggestions as to why this never mattered for the months and months before the crash and it suddenly matters now, please let me know, because it just seems odd. I'm getting very close to not wanting to fool with it anymore. I may just let it ride til Christmas break, save my entries, wipe the whole thing and reupload everything. I don't know.you have her face & her eyes but you are not her
Was gonna do What's On, but for some reason the site doesn't render for me except the background. None of the text shows up. I think it might be the firewall. The Daily Double page doesn't show up at all. I was also gonna do the Friday Five, but it's about shopping and allowances, and I don't remember the answers to half the questions, and the other half...I just don't feel like it.& we go at each other like blank ettes
Am now taking Effexor. Yes, I know I'm on a lot of drugs. Shut up. Thank you. The shrink wants me to stay on a low dose because a high dose might fuck me up. I've already noticed my tongue loosening, and I'm gonna have to start watching it more at work, because one of the first effects that SSRI's have on me is that they make me more loquacious, and nothing good ever comes of that. Hopefully, though, this will succeed where all the reward systems and charts and schedules and motivational apparatuses have failed, and I will start doing my housework regularly and painting again. Because the way it is right now, folks...it ain't happenin'.blank ettes who can't find their thread & their bare
Must go rustle up leftovers...can't stop what's coming, can't stop what is on its way
same bitch time, same bitch channel...--tori, "bells for her," under the pink, 1994
Mystery for the day: On the front of the one-dollar bill, there's a big numeral 1 in the upper right-hand corner inside a shield-looking thingie. At the upper left-hand corner of the shield-looking thingie, there's a scallop, and the engraving stops just short of this scallop. Nestled in the scallop is something that looks like a barn owl. What the hell is that, and what's it doing there?

November 21, 2003

And on the 5th day, there were 5 5's...

I will now take a break from dragging myself toward the finish line of another week by doing the Friday Five.

1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.
hm...there's not a lot of year left. And do you mean the fiscal year, the sidereal year, the calendar year or the pagan year? Cos witches celebrate New Year's on Halloween...eh. I'll just make it easy and assume you're talking about the calendar year. Here goes then:
~Not kill anybody.
~Avoid having any of my medical bills go into collections.
~Get back into the studio and do some more painting.
~Finish my Yule wreath before Yule.
~Get the archives on this blog straightened out.

2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.
Hm, another toughie. A great many of the people that I've lost contact with, the reason I've lost contact is that they're on my ignore list. I'll see if I can come up with five that aren't...
~My best friend from Pennsylvania.
~My best friend from junior high, who I'm not sure wants to talk to me anymore.
~My best friend from high school, who...I'm not sure what her deal is.
I can't think of anybody else that I've lost contact with who has anything to say to me that I'd want to hear.

3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.
~Astral-project.
~Play bass.
~Destroy people's loud car stereos without being caught.
~Make money doing something I actually enjoy, like sitting around.
~Walk away from that shitty old pit in my mind that I keep falling into, and stay away from it for good.

4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).
~Get all my teeth fixed.
~Get a house.
~Get my folks a [bigger] house.
~Buy a whole shitload of condoms, like millions and millions of them, and distribute them, with easy-to-understand illustrated instructions, all over the planet along with pamphlets about overpopulation and responsible family planning [for the few people out there who can read].
~Set up funds for battered women's shelters and animal shelters.

5. List five things you do that help you relax.
Nothing really helps me relax. I just get tired.

If you hadn't noticed, the site is having some minor issues. Please check back later.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Admonition for the day: Whatever lame advice you may have that you think I should follow because it worked for you or your grandma or the people in the magazine article you read, I don't wanna hear it, please. This isn't a reverse Dear Abby column. Thank you and have a glorious day. -FP

November 20, 2003

Memos

Re: Y! Messenger: Are we about done with the goddamn chain letters now? IF Yahoo were going to start charging for Messenger, do you really think that sending a chain IM around would make any difference? That's what always gets me about chain letters--that people still think there's somebody out there counting up all the people who send the letter, or that they're somehow getting put onto a list of some kind that serves as a "petition." THERE IS NOBODY DOING THIS, EINSTEIN. KNOCK IT OFF.

A real petition is where you go to the site and you leave your name. If you don't do that, you can send all the damn IM's in the world and nobody [me, for instance] will know or care--unless, of course, they were scanning your IM's to see if you were one of the people sending that message. The only people who could do that would be either Yahoo themselves or a hacker. Why would Yahoo waste all that effort scanning each message by each person looking for strings contained in the chain letter when they could just set a petition page up? And if it wasn't Yahoo, why would you help, or trust, a hacker?

Use your heads as something besides hair farms, willya? Some wiseass is yanking your chain. As far as I know, they do this on Yahoo at least once a year.

Re: The unconscious: I actually had a dream today where I was able to turn a light on and off. True, it was a bathroom night light, but I haven't been able to do that since as far back as I can remember. I'd always dream about being in the dark and going to turn on a light, and it wouldn't work, or it'd burn very dimly for a little bit and then go out. The room, of course, represented my situation or my state of mind, and the lights were the ways I would try to "brighten things up"--improve things--that would prove fruitless. And maybe this is a signal that some of the things I'm doing are starting to work. [The lights could also represent understanding, or ideas for which the proper mental connections have to be made--and had not been getting made--before they can be applied.]

Another thing I took note of was that the houses in the more recent dreams are not familiar to me, yet they feel mine, somehow, like a house you're about to move into. And they're not as scary or dilapidated as the dream-versions of my present or past dwellings, or the other strange houses I've found myself dreaming. This one was actually a nice house, with gardens and so forth.

Then there's the issue of there always being one room by itself at the top of the house, on a floor all its own...still haven't figured that one out yet, but every freakin' house I've dreamed about in the last 6 months to a year has either had it or had the illusion of having it. And I always gotta go up there. Don't know why.

Re: Jacko: I think it's already been well established that this person is a fruitcake. And while there are considerable extenuating circumstances [such as the fact that as a child, he never had a chance at a normal psychological development], the time when therapy on its own would have helped seems to be long past. Lock the fucker up and medicate him, please.

Yes, I'm one of those bleeding hearts who thinks that everybody who's in jail should also be in therapy [and on psychoactive medication if necessary], not because they're crazy, but because face it, if you're in jail, you've got problems, and you have plenty of time to work them out. Now I'm going to get harped at about how much this would cost. Well, you know, lots of things cost, but the size of the price tag doesn't determine how necessary it is. And I'm not saying we can do it. I'm just saying we should. Because whatever jail's doing for people, it's certainly not making them more well-adjusted, which is an integral part of being a decent citizen.

If I were running for office, I'd have a more detailed plan than just "give them counseling." But I'm not, so don't write to me telling me all the reasons why it won't work, because I don't care. Thank you.

And that's a wrap. Must get ready for hell work...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Tragic celebrity fuckup for the day: Scott Weiland. He can sing, he can write, he looks great in a feather boa and eyeliner. So is he ever gonna pull his shit together or is he gonna end up like Layne Staley?

November 19, 2003

A Very Special What's On

Oh dear. This is something you should never ask a witch, unless you're prepared to sit all day and listen to a description of each herb and the medicinal properties and side effects thereof. I'll spare you and just give you a list of the stuff I actually use in food, and leave out the items that are primarily for medicinal use. Also, the spice rack is not anywhere near large enough to hold all this, so I'm counting the surrounding shelves which contain spices as my spice rack as well, since most of them were specifically installed for that purpose.

Since we can't figure out whose house it's going to be at, I really don't know. If my brother and his kids are having Turkey Day at his house, my folks and I will have turkey at my folks' house. If my brother and his kids are coming to my folks' house, I'm going to stay home by myself and make a meatloaf or something. Either way, when I count the things for which I'm thankful, one of them will be that my Thanksgiving wasn't ruined by other people's personality disorders.

And as a bonus, I've added a third question:

3. What's On your hard drive Right Now?

Among other things, 218 MB of lesbo pr0n that I did not put there. I found this when I did a search for large files after noticing that my C:\ partition had gone from just over half full to almost 3/4 full without my downloading anything besides web pages, which I routinely purge along with my temporary files. Disk cleanup yielded about 1.03 square micrometers of space, so I went hunting and guess what I found? The Pr0n F4iry left me some presents--2 of which were over 100 MB each. It had to be the Pr0n F4iry, because no human being that I know of could cram a file that size through a 56k modem, no matter how much e-Vaseline they used, without my noticing it.

Okay, I lied. Everybody knows the Pr0n F4iry is doing rounds in New Zealand this time of year. Some ub3r-1337 h4x0r p3r50n had to have done it, and judging by the timing of the appearance of the huge hulking mass squatting in my hard drive, I'm guessing it had something to do with a series of experiences I had a couple weekends ago in which somebody took issue with my saying "conversations about sex will be ignored" in my profile, and later that day somebody [different person? same person, different ID?] tried to download something onto my PC, forcing me to switch off my modem and ctl-alt-del to shut uff Yahoo, which was totally locked up.

The best working theory I have is that somebody decided to punish me for being [in their sage opinion] a prude by sticking smut on my drive. However, in being an idiot and confusing me with the chastity-belt-wearing Victorian schoolteacher type, Mr. Ub3r-L337's plan backfired, because you will most likely never hear me complain about people giving me 100%-free, in-colour, muff-munching smut.

And that's what's on all that stuff right now.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Random pet peeve for the day: Women who are consistently, honestly female chauvanists.

November 14, 2003

Thesaurus Time!

El Cinco de Viernes.In th'olde dayes of the king Arthour,1. Using one adjective, describe your current living space.
Anarchic.Of which that Britons speken greet honour,2. Using two adjectives, describe your current employer.
Irresponsible and insolvent.Al was this land fulfild of fayerye.3. Using three adjectives, describe your favorite hobby/pastime.Goddammit, what do I keep telling you guys about favourites??? Er, I don't have a favourite hobby or pastime. I just do whatever I feel like doing that particular day. Frequently I'm on the computer, but the amount of time I spend on it is shameful enough already, considering that it makes me no money and produces nothing tangible. To call it a hobby would be like calling talking to yourself a hobby. I don't have the energy for real hobbies anymore. Next.The elf-queen with hir joly companye4. Using four adjectives, describe your typical day.
Long, crappy, exhausting, and painful.Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede5. Using five adjectives, describe your ideal life.
Quiet, rural, wealthy, philanthropic, friend-filled.This was the olde opinion, as I rede.
That's enough. May I have my Depo now, please?I speke of manye hundred yeres ago.
Oh, wait, that's not for another two weeks. Then may I at least rent a rubber room for oh, a fortnight or so? thxBut now can no man see none elves mo,
Hades' check-in desk has been busy lately. The dad of a guy at work died early this week, and the husband of another lady at work died just the other day. Looks like it's gonna be a weekend of cooking things, bringing them to people's houses, and giving hugs. I might go visit the retired fellow from our shift, too.For now the grete charitee and prayeres
I think they're gonna cut our hours pretty soon. The backlog is way down. Time to tighten the belt again...Of limitours and othere holy freres,
oh well, what're you gonna do, right? You got lean times, and you got...leaner times. Things get grim, you just tough it out, I suppose. I mean, what else can you do? Oh, you can look for that golden door out of your situation...but I've seen too many people stick their money into some Wile E. Coyote scheme and fall flat on their face, and I know better than to think that smarts are gonna get me that much farther than dumb luck. [Dumb people usually think different, like we bright people have some kind of golden ticket. We don't, folks. You can stop resenting us now.] And that's what most schemes are--pie-in-the-sky stuff, not something that's gonna provide a reliable return on your investment and a steady income. I've seen my brother come up with business ideas and plans to make tons of money, and they all end up circling the bowl because he's a dweeb in business matters, he doesn't like to work, and he always thinks his ideas are better than everybody else's. In fact, nobody in my family has made livable money at their own business, except my one uncle, who could run a sausage stand in the Gobi Desert and make a living because he has a knack for it.That serchen every lond and every streem,
Eh...~shrug~...you tough it out, you ride it through til better times come, and then you enjoy the better times and try to save some for the next lean times.As thikke as motes in the sonne-beem,
My PC clock isn't falling behind anymore. I think it cured itself or something.blessinge halles, chambres, kichenes, boures,
And I'm hungry. And I really need B vitamins.Citees, burghes, castels, hye toures,Update: After digging my long-forgotten canister of oatmeal out of the cupboard (because I hate oatmeal and it takes a long time before I'm hungry enough to eat it), making up a bowl in the microwave, finding bugs in it, and then looking in the canister and finding LIVE bugs in the canister, I am no longer hungry. I am, however, nauseated, terrified to look inside any of the other containers of dry goods in my cupboard, relieved that I noticed the bugs before I ate any of the oatmeal, and mystified as to how the bugs got into a sealed cardboard canister. There's a few more adjectives for ya.Thropes, bernes, shipnes, dayeryes:
I'm going to go gag now.This maketh that ther been no fayeryes.
same bitch time, same bitch channel...--Canterbury Tales [original Middle English]
Quote for the day: "Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here."--Jack Nicholson, from the film As Good As It Gets

At least that's who I am this morning. Tomorrow might be a different story altogether, and so will the next day, and the day after that...

I'm too fuggin' tired to be an architect.

Interestingly enough, this was the same thing that the vocational aptitude tests they gave us in high school told me--"You're a natural architect." So I went round in my senior year saying I was going to go to college and study architecture, until it dawned on me that I didn't give a flying fuck about architecture except that it looks pretty. I had [and still have] about as much interest in actually being an architect as a duck has in high-stakes blackjack. The only architecture I have ever done to this date is making interior maps for AD&D modules.

Which is the main reason I don't know what the hell to do with the rest of my life. All the stuff I'm actually good at is stuff that is generally only applied to boring-as-dirt shit, or something horrible involving human contact and stuff. So I take these tests, and they tell me I should be an architect or an accountant or some other rot-and-get-fat-in-your-chair thing that I totally don't want to spend 40 hours a week doing, any more than I wanna do the dumb shit job I have now, which at least gets me some exercise. Who the fuck wants to spend the rest of their life rotting away at a desk anyway?

My questions:ow
1. Jesus Christ, has this week sucked or what?ow
2. Is it Friday yet?ow
3. Am I gonna get a bill in the mail today?ow
4. Is it gonna suck?ow
5. Am I at least gonna get paid this week?ow
Post your own questions [or the link to them] in the comments section...ow
That's all for today; I was clipping off parts last night and I chopped into my left pinky finger, right on the end in the spot that I hit the keys with.ow
same bitch time, same bitch channel...ow
Thought for the day: Somebody should tell David Lee Roth that Nordic-Tracking with the devil is much lower-impact and less stress on the knees than running. Pilates with a lesser demon works too, if the devil's booked up.ow

November 11, 2003

Little Instruction Book Vol. 1

The bulletin we get every month at work always contains several entries from a publication called "Life's Little Instruction Book." The author of this book apparently has very specific ideas about how people ought to live their lives, including such suggestions as "have a dog" [which sounds nice unless you live in an apartment complex that doesn't allow pets, or unless you're allergic to pet dander] and "watch a sunrise at least once a year" [which also sounds nice until you do it, and realise that the sun is the pokiest goddamn thing since MSN's Gaming Zone, and wish you'd brought a book or a deck of cards or something; and then you realise it's too damn dark to see anything anyway and you really ought to have just slept in.]

Well, it occurred to me that if this person could write an instruction book for people to follow in their daily lives, based solely on their personal opinion of how people's lives ought to be, then hell, why couldn't I? So today I bring you volume 1 [don't ask when vol. 2 is gonna be, haven't thought that far ahead yet] of...

WitchyBitch's Little Instruction Book

~When in a chatroom, ask permission before IM'ing or PM'ing somebody. Otherwise you will be considered a turd.

~Chew with your mouth closed, for Hygeia's sake.

~Take your vitamins, unless vitamins make you puke, in which case just eat lots of peanut butter.

~Don't pick on people. You never know if their best friend might be a bouncer, a linebacker or an ex-convict [or all three].

~Stop sniffing your hand. It makes you look like a sped.

~Remember, it's your choice whether to have a positive or negative attitude, but either way, you're still gonna be fucked come tax time.

~3-in-One Oil lubricates, cleans, and prevents rust.

~At least once in your life, flip somebody a double eagle when they cut you off at a four-way stop.

~Send me money. Lots of it.

~Make sure to watch at least one bloody barfight a year.

~Learn how to remove a bra without removing the shirt that's over it.

~Always put the wizard in the middle of the party. The poor bastard only has 4 hit points.

~Green blemish concealer works great to take the pinkness out of your lips when wearing silver lipstick, thus making the lip colour stand out better.

~Optimus makes kinda shitty stereos but very nice speakers.

~If at first you don't succeed, blame the other guy.

~If you still don't succeed, just lie and say you did. It usually works out the same.

~Don't buy a pink guitar from a pawn shop. If it's been there for more than three hours, it's still there for a reason.

~Floss, goddammit!

~Never let benzoyle peroxide get on your clothes, unless you like that tie-dyed look.

~When telling somebody something, be as forthright and as polite as possible. If the person does not understand you, drop the polite and just go for blunt. If they still don't understand you, they're stupid, and you should avoid that person as much as possible. You'll live longer. Maybe.

~Don't eat the guv'mt cheese.

~Use unscented soap on your quim and you won't get the itchies so much. Refraining from fucking unwashed strange men helps too.

~Drive something that either uses alternative fuel sources or gets really good mileage. 1 in 14 children in the US has asthma and it's partially your fault, you SUV-owning koalafuckers.

~Smile. :)

Okay, that's about all I have the stomach for today. Maybe tomorrow...

P.S. I was gonna post today's Beetle Bailey, but I can't find it on any of the sites that post comics, so I'll have to scan it in from the newspaper and post it [until Mort Walker yells at me to take it down :D]. Will do this tomorrow.

November 09, 2003

Things I Have Learned Over The Weekend

Chatrooms can be a very informative resource for self-knowledge. I found out the following things about myself in the last 48 hours or so, because the wonderful people I met on Yahoo! Chat felt moved to share them with me.

1. I am a prude because I do not want people to IM me about sex.

2. I am mentally ill because I do not want people to IM me about sex.

3. I am not a real Wiccan because I am eclectic and not anal-retentive a Gardnerian or an Alexandrian.

4. I am "close minded," which apparently means my mind is close to something. The person didn't elaborate on what, exactly, it's close to.

5. I am rude because when I say "do not IM/PM me without permission," I actually mean it.

6. I am a complete moron for being on Depo, because nobody in their right mind who actually knew anything about it would use it. You know, because you can fix everything, including cancer, terminal radiation poisoning, and having been dead for 20 years, with vitamins, a diet change and the right homeopathic products.

Gosh, I didn't know I had all these things wrong with me. I'll have to fix them at once.

BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!

If you have a problem with what I call myself, or what drugs/hormonal treatments I use, or what I will and won't talk about online, please contact the WitchyBitch Customer Service Department at 1-800-WAA-WAAA. Thank you and have a glorious day.

And for the record, everybody who thinks Gardnerians and Alexandrians are the only true Wiccans are officially invited to bite my unwashed minge and thereafter stay the fiery fuck away from me. thx <3 Oh, I could be all mature about it and argue my position intelligently, but it seems to me that anybody with that kind of snobby elitist opinion in the first place wouldn't listen to me if I told them the goddamn moon was round; so I'll save myself the carpal tunnel syndrome and just direct you to Granny over in the sidebar there.

November 07, 2003

Ewww, you like WHO?

Today on Friday Five: Whether You Like What Other People Like. [insert punchline here]whistle while you work1. What food do you like that most people hate?
Fat-free mozzerella cheese.hitler is a jerk2. What food do you hate that most people love?
Beer. [Yeah, that's a food. In fact, in college, it's one of the four main food groups, along with pizza, Doritos and Mountain Dew.]mussolini bit his weenie3. What famous person, whom many people may find attractive, is most unappealing to you?
Pretty much everybody. They all look like either Botoxed puke or something that somebody took home from the piercing salon. Attractiveness in celebrities is approaching a stylized, artificial grotesqueness usually reserved for characters in the animated Disney movies of the last decade or so.now it doesn't work4. What famous person, whom many people may find unappealing, do you find attractive?
Uh...correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the magazines only write about the people that everybody does find attractive? So if there's somebody that everybody thinks is ugly, I wouldn't know they exist. A couple years ago, I would've cited Billy Corgan, until he started blathering about Jesus and putting crosses and shit all over everything, thus destroying most of what I found appealing about him; and until he rediscovered his testes while scratching himself one day, got excited about it, and abandoned his arty feminine side in favour of loud, guitar-driven, underachieving cock rock that doesn't hold a candle to the gorgeous pieces he's capable of. [Now he's reading poetry in a shirt and tie. Even I don't know what the fuck gender that is. Cubicle androgyny? hmm...good band name...Anyway, I'm hoping it's good poetry. Not living in Chicago, I wouldn't know.][traditional]
I would say Elijah Wood, but I think too many people would agree that he's hot; he wouldn't qualify. [If he does, then this culture's definition of beauty has mutated completely beyond my ability to comprehend it.] Ditto for Beck.willie was a chemist5. What popular trend baffles you?
You mean, among the few that I actually take the trouble to be aware of? Well, pretty much all of them can be chalked up to stupidity, skillful marketing and other forms of brainwashing, sloth, or an unhealthy body image. I'm having trouble thinking of one that's truly inexplicable. That's not to say they don't defy common sense--they do. But it's not hard to find enough people who are stupid or distracted or insecure enough to override their common sense [assuming they have any, which they may not] to get a trend rolling.willie is no more
Well, that's it for FF this week.cos what he thought was H2O
Today I get to go have my meds checked and my head shrunk. With a little negotiation, I shouldn't have to go back again til almost spring, thus skirting the nastiest of the winter driving weather. Ma bitches about the drive [I'm having her drive me today because I did NOT sleep well yesterday and don't trust my driving], but I really like this shrink, and don't mind a long drive every so often.was H2SO4
And the weight is staying down in the 212-214 range, which means in the next month or so, the elusive 210 may pop up on the scale a few more times. It's slow, but it's actually happening. It seems to be mostly a matter of keeping a close eye on how many snacks I'm eating, and keeping hydrated. I was lucky enough to have shed some water before my doc appointment Tue. so the scale read lower than last appointment, because I've been getting screwed at the clinic scale by always ending up the same weight even when my average semiweekly weight is going down. That's Depo for ya. Hopefully, shedding more weight actually will spell lower BP and I can get off the diuretics [though they don't really have any noticeable side effects, which is a welcome change]. They're cheap, though; it's the Topamax that's a sock in the jaw at the checkout, though not nearly as bad as it would be if insurance didn't pay most of it.[also traditional]
Speaking of socks to the jaw, I found out the dentist bill is twice what I thought...apparently Fortis last calculated the cost of fillings in 1982, or they expect the dentist to use wadded aluminum foil pounded in with a mallet. So they pay 80% but only up to an amount, and whatever part of the bill slops over that [like, if you want decent fillings that don't look like hunks of pewter in your mouth] is your baby. So I gotta fork over another $133 before I can have more work done. There goes the last of my OT pay, and then some. Easy come, easy go, right?

eh...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Project for the weekend that I want to do, and should do, but am totally not going to do because I'm going to sit around on the computer instead: Make MSG-free taco seasoning for chips, sorta like Salsa Doritos, but without all the crap, just the spices. Will have to locate dried jalapenos.

November 05, 2003

On

I'm too lazy to type much of anything today, and besides, the only interesting thing that happened all night involved watching the mold tech and the supervisor both stand on the press trying to get the mold into it [apparently it wouldn't fit, and I saw a mallet and, at one point, a bastard file used in attempts to get it into the frame].

1. When did you lose your first tooth?
When I was little. That's about as specific as I can get. We don't get all goopy and nostalgic about that sort of thing in my family.

2. Where did you go for kindergarten?
An elementary school in Pennsylvania.

Well, that's about it...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Cheese for the day: Kraft Fat-Free Mozzerella. Before you go "EWWWWWW," let me call to your attention the fact that the fat-free costs only slightly more than the 2%, and can be mixed halvsies with regular mozzerella, which is ridiculously cheap. Once it's all melted on your pizza, you won't notice there's less fat anyway. If you do, and it's a big sticking point with you, then you might as well give up food altogether and just subsist entirely on lard and hydrogenated oils, since that's the only thing in the food that matters to you anyway. Bon appetit! <3

November 04, 2003

The Dull Red Eye of the Mouse

Yeah, I got an optical. This one clicks a little hard but is otherwise comfy...and it scrolls from left to right!Don't use Fortis dental insurance if you can help it.
Today in the chatrooms we were confronted with an individual who went by the name of jessica17867, who is very horny and thinks you should pay her money because of it. Go read her profile, if you don't mind, and tell her what you think of her. Extra credit if you can guess what I think.Their idea of a filling is a $72 wad of tinfoil.
And once again, the landlords [or whoever does cleanup in that thinly patronized excuse for a restaurant downstairs] have proven themselves of doing anything, including winding string, quietly.Get anything more and you will pay out the ass.
And I got my dad a foot roller thing cos he liked mine, and got myself a tetanus shot because I gouged myself with the tape dispenser [which I do all the time] and the doc couldn't find my last shot in the records and insisted I have one. This was fine, though; when you work at a place like where I work, you wanna make sure your Td shot is up to date. Shoulder kinda hurts, though. I couldn't remember the last shot, before, but I do now; it was the day of prom, and I wore this dress with tight-ass sleeves right after getting a whole bunch of those shots they always want you to get before you can go to college. So that'd be just under 10 years ago.This Rotten Tooth Bakery
And MallWart had a big goddamn TV the size of an apartment complex squatting in their store, right by where the batteries are supposed to be, because of a recently released study by the National Institute of Health indicating that most Americans don't get their recommended daily amount of blaring fucking noise, eye-bending artificial light and contentment-eroding advertising. And also because they'd heard that I'd hardly seen TV at all in the last year and a half and needed to be brought back into the fold, or at least punished for straying by being severely annoyed while trying to look for C batteries.thought you'd like to know.
I need coffee and clothes. Toodles.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Battery for the day: C. Used in radios and personal massagers. If using C batteries in a portable CD player, either get rechargables or prepare to purchase large numbers of batteries, because CD players apparently soak up juice like Death Valley soaks up pocket mouse pee.

November 03, 2003

eyes slideways

...or downside, depending on how strangely your browser renders this page. [For instance, I'm using IE5, and at this very moment, I have one blinking cursor where I'm actually typing right now, and another, non-blinking one in the title field that won't go away. Why? Well, probably for the same reason it cuts off whatever parts of my blog fall below the end of the sidebar when the window is maximized, and for the same reason the bottom of the title text gets chopped off: Because IE is such a fine fucking piece of software, folks, that's why.]

Anyway, Microsoft retardedness aside, there are new buttons in the comics section. Go check them out. Lovaria is a D&D-like story drawn [quite well, speaking as an art major] in anime style and set up like a comic book; you probably want to start at the beginning. The other ones are pagan comic strips and stand alone more. They look like they're done by the same person, but they're not.

Also, in true nerd style, I went to an actual library and took out some books [all the books, actually; anybody else who wants to build a website on their own in that town is gonna be pretty damn mad for the next few weeks] on HTML and web-building, so hopefully soon I'll be edjumucated enough to do more stuff with this site...once I get done listening to Dave Barry on that wonderful format called Books On CD, which has only recently made its bad self available at our local information mecca.

Anywho, must run, long day ahead...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Anal-retentive grammar peeve for the day: Hyphens. When linking words for use as a single adjective [like "anal-retentive" in the above phrase], use a hyphen. When using a two-word phrase for any purpose other than as an adjective ["Joe is an anal retentive"; the two words are used as a noun], DO NOT USE A HYPHEN. If you can't read the sentence you're writing and tell from the context whether a word is a noun or an adjective, stop writing immediately and go sign up for remedial courses at your local high school [or elementary school if need be].

November 02, 2003

Do, Doo and Due: A Chatroom English Usage Primer

While spending time in the chatrooms, I've noticed that some people have problems with some of the finer nuances of written English. As a service to the online community, Witchy Bitch and the Bitch Foundation have decided to provide this simple guide [again] to spelling and usage so that people might prevent themselves from looking like illiterate howler monkeys when conversing online.

Do: A verb meaning "to perform."Doo: Something brown and gross that you step in.Due: Payable or expected to be received at a certain time.

Using "U" for you and "R" for are makes you look like a lazy turd. They're three-letter words, for Christ's sake, not medical terminology. "W/o" for without is acceptable, and so is "esp." for especially, because you're saving several keystrokes that way, and so is substituting numerals for typed-out numbers [i.e. "9" instead of "nine"] but if you're so stingy that you can't spare two keystrokes to make a whole word, go buy a $10 mike and switch to voice chat.

By the same token, using "ne" for any is total douche. It doesn't make you look hip and trendy, it makes you look like a moron. Make the extra keystroke and stop looking like a lazy welfare queen.

For the five thousandth time, plural nouns NEVER, EVER, EVER contain apostrophes. I have three cat's. WRONG!! KNOCK IT OFF! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU LEARN THAT??!? Correct: I have three cats. See? No apostrophe. The purpose of an apostrophe is to denote possession or to take the place of dropped letters in contractions.

On the other hand, contractions like "didn't" and "hasn't" and "there's" ALWAYS GET APOSTROPHES!!

Possessive NOUNS get apostrophes. [the cat's feet, Joe's car] Possessive PRONOUNS never, ever get apostrophes, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THE LETTER "S" APPEARS!!! her's, your's Nein, nein, NEIN! You sat in English class for 12 years being told NOT to do this! Did you leave your brain at home the whole time?

There's: there is.Theirs: belonging to them.

I feel like I'm talking to a bunch of fucking second-graders.

Coarse: rough.Course: a route, a series of lessons, or used in the phrase "of course"

"Da" is not an acceptable substitute for "the," unless you're deliberately trying to sound like Rocky Balboa. If this is the case, stop it now.

I've wasted enough time on this crap. If you don't get it by now, reading this probably won't help. And quit moving your lips!!

This guide brought to you by the Bitch Foundation.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Pet peeve for the day: Chatrooms that turn into orgies. Log off and spank your monkey.

November 01, 2003

Saturday Night's All Right

It isn't technically Saturday anymore--not here, anyway--so I'll just backdate this.No recipes. I really don't feel like it today.
Saturday Scruples has apparently decided to take an unannounced vacation, as many memes tend to do, so I'm doing the Daily Double today instead.

1. About how many people came to your house this halloween?
About 0. I left the stairwell lights turned off, and my apartment is at the top of a really tall, scary staircase that everybody's afraid to ascend to even find out if anybody lives up there. It was just as well; all the candy had been either eaten or left at work [to get it the hell away from me, as a) I have enough acne, and b)it's flu season and I don't need all that refined sugar compromising my immune system], so all I could have given anybody would have been raw ground turkey, frozen shrimp, spinach, and Brita filters. Not exactly the kind of thing that lights up little masked faces.

2. When was the last time you brushed your teeth?
Yesterday. Gonna do it again today, after I eat some meatloaf. [Brushing your teeth before meatloaf kinda misses the point.]

Now for some bitchin'...

I'm having a lousy middle ear day, so how much Samhain stuff I'll actually do tonight, I don't know. Right now I'm sorta just waiting for the antihistamine to kick in and open up my Eustachian tubes, and the ginger to kick in and settle the nausea I'm getting from feeling like I'm in a canoe. I wasn't gonna do much anyway, just raise a little energy, cast a circle, acknowledge the new year, maybe pay homage to the deities and renew my energy. No big spells or anything; I'm not even sure I wanna do Tarot readings. I think the solar flare shit would mess all that up anyway; not a good time to do that kind of thing unless you're sufficiently in practice to harness that kind of energy instead of letting it just scramble it all up. And I'm not. There's a full moon next weekend, though; I might prepare for that.

I found one of the holes in our first line of defense against bad parts. It's in one of the machine operators' heads. Big surprise, right? First off, let me say that she's a super-sweet lady, very considerate [sometimes almost to the point of being servile], and I'm sure she really does make her best effort to look at the parts she's running, even when she's got 4 presses to watch. But she's not what you'd call detective material.

She and I were working overtime a couple weeks ago, and we were listening to a tape and talking about audio media. And I happened to say something like, "But you know, the thing I always liked about tapes is that they never skip."

She goes, very curious and amazed, "They don't?"

Holy fucking spraypainted Christ. Did I mention that this woman is in her 50's? As far as I'm concerned, if you're 15 and you haven't observed that the mechanism of cassettes doesn't allow for skippage, you have an inattentiveness problem. Or an IQ problem. Or both.

I just got up, and I wanna go back to bed.

I also found out that the bitchin' public radio station that plays jazz all week switches to playing weird metal shit and Mexicrap all weekend, so I can't even tune in to some jazz to pick me up. Oh well, at least I have it at work...but I want JAZZ, goddammit, not some stupid douchesack on an acoustic guitar showing off how fast he can pick.

I should at least clean the living room and my altar. That's gonna be a challenge in the middle of the night with no working ceiling light.

jeez, I'm drifting off...spent 9 hours in bed & could sleep another 3. Will clean for a bit, see how I feel. If, that is, I can ever get up out of this chair.

I also think I've become allergic/sensitive to my deodorant. How you can be allergic to a goddamn unscented deodorant is beyond me.

Please do not leave comments suggesting what I should do about any of these issues, because then I'd have to clean your clock and make an example of you, and I'm not really up to that just now. People seem to love to do that, as if they're all Dear Fucking Abby and they know what's best for you, dearie, you just take my advice, and if you don't, you're an ungrateful bastard. Whatever it is you feel moved to suggest, if it's been around for more than 3 months, I've either a) tried it or b) researched it and dismissed it as not viable. Please note that I didn't ask anyway. This goes for all entries in this blog. Thank you.

You know, like anybody leaves comments here anyway. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Judging from my IP log, most of the people who come to this site have a mouse attached to their computer, but not a keyboard, for some reason. Mysterious.